Professional Relationship
by Jee oto ta Huttuk koga
Summary: Sam and Bucky have only one thing in common. Short one-shot. (Slowly adding more as I think of it)
1. One

Sam had been grumbling a lot lately. That fact rankled a bit because he wasn't a cranky person by nature. And he was self-aware enough to know exactly what was eating him. "Dangit, Steve," he muttered as his dark eyes scanned the area for danger as he walked, "I know he was your friend and all, but I really don't want to see this guy." He deftly avoided a pile of jangled rebar and concrete. "And who picks a warehouse for a meeting spot?" He wrinkled his nose. "You don't know any safe spots that don't smell like stinky feet..?"

A shadowed bulk appeared out of nowhere in his peripheral vision, and Sam nearly jumped a mile.The only coherent thought he had while his body screamed a warning of imminent murder was _How are his eyes glowing like that?_ But then the black-armored figure moved a fraction, and the glow proved to be only a trick of the light, a shaft of sunlight that angled across Bucky's face through a jagged slat high on the wall. "You want to give a man a little warning?" Sam almost shouted.

Bucky's mane of brown hair gave him a dangerous, feral look. Those blue eyes, dead and distant and only slightly less weird now, ranged over Sam. "I did. You saw me."

"Maybe a warning that doesn't give a man a cardiac event?"

Bucky lifted one eyebrow. "On your left?"

Sam rolled his eyes and made a snorking noise halfway between an aborted curse and a laugh. "Oh, it's going to be like that?"

"I'm not sure it's going to be anything," Bucky said, with matter-of-fact emphasis on the last word. He gave a lopsided shrug with, Sam noted, his right shoulder. "Steve wanted me here. So I'm here."

"I hear you," Sam said. "I didn't want to come either."

"I almost didn't."

They glared at each other. Sam ran one hand over his hair in exasperation, trying to remember what Steve had told him about the former assassin being a fundamentally decent guy. Then he noticed the huge industrial press that squatted near the wall. He remembered Bucky struggling to consciousness with his metal arm pinned between its plates, and the agony etched into Steve's face as he'd hoped so hard that he would be speaking with his friend instead of the Winter Soldier. Bucky was looking at it too, his expression difficult to read. After a moment, Bucky broke the silence. "Steve trusted you."

"I like to think I'm trustworthy," Sam replied, feeling all of a sudden that it mattered to him whether this…_jerk_…trusted him, and he didn't like it at all. "Okay, look. You don't like me. I don't like you. But we are both Steve's friends. I don't know what he sees in you, but he trusts you. And I trust Steve."

Bucky looked away. "I don't know what he sees in me, either," he spat, almost angrily. But Sam's instinct and experience caught undertones in the words that sounded like guilt and sadness and a wariness that had never been natural, but had been hard-learned. Bucky's jaw tightened, and he let out a long, slow breath through his nose. He reached into a pocket at his waist and tossed Sam a round, dark object that gleamed as it tumbled toward him. It flashed briefly on contact with Sam's skin, then quieted back to its unassuming inky black. "It's bound to you, now. Use it to contact me, if you need my help."

Sam held it up. Its surface seemed to absorb light. "Do I say your name three times, or something?"

Annoyance crossed Bucky's face. "What?"

"Like Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice? Nothing, man? I see you need some cultural education. Did Steve ever show you that list of his?" Now Bucky just looked confused, which gave Sam some private amusement. "So, what if you need help? How do you call me?"

Bucky glanced at a spot above and behind Sam and tensed as if to dodge or to leap.

Sam pivoted and drew his weapon. There was nothing there. "Way to avoid answering a reasonable question," Sam said, as he holstered his pistol and turned back. Bucky was gone, as if he had never been standing there. Not even a disturbed air current had marked his departure.

"I hate you!" Sam bellowed into the empty warehouse. "You jerk!"

A few seconds later came a reply, soft-voiced and unsteady like a quivering leaf. "Punk."


	2. Two

"More altitude."

Bucky's calm voice over the link irritated Sam. You'd think the jerk was ordering coffee or something instead of dangling off of Sam's belt by his metal arm, getting shot at by goons on the ground and chased by NAVAIR missiles. He didn't bother to warn Bucky, but powered into a steep climb. In seconds, they pulled 3 Gs as the ground and the trees and the startled troops spiraled away below them. Bucky gasped, and Sam couldn't help grinning. Redwing circled them easily, releasing glowing tracer bursts to redirect the most stubborn of the NAVAIRs.

Sam leveled off his flight and adjusted his wings to maintain an easy cruise. "You all right down there?"

"Yeah," Bucky replied after a long moment, making Sam smile again.

Sam had scouted several possible set-down sites during mission planning, and opted for a large clearing that was an off-season shooting range about ten miles away. He descended slowly to let Barnes have a chance to drop off first. Bucky landed heavily into a roll and allowed the momentum to propel him to his feet. His rifle was up the next second as he quickly panned around to be sure they were clear of hostiles. Sam touched down lightly a few yards distant. "I think you crushed my belt," he said, glancing down in disgust as he retracted his wings into their impossibly small back frame. "Yeah it's all messed up with your finger dents."

"Bill me," Bucky said dryly as he examined the higher terrain through the scope.

"You've got some blood on your face." Sam stepped into Bucky's field of view. "Just under your eye there."

"Probably spatter. I took a round."

"You took a…" Sam sputtered. "You got shot?"

"It's nothing."

Sam blinked, then blinked again. "Show me."

Bucky kept his attention on the scope. "No."

"Now wait just a minute!" Sam moved closer, gesturing angrily. "You have a bullet in you, right now, and you're not going to let the combat medic assess it? You're going to be the big bad armored machine and just bleed out all your oil, is that it?"

The heavy rifle lowered a fraction, and Bucky turned his head to look directly at Sam with an amused look on his face. "I heal as fast as Steve does."

"That's not the point." Sam suppressed an urge to punch him right in his smug mouth. "If I clean it now and close it, it will heal better and not hurt so much. You're not going to tell me it doesn't hurt? Or do you like pain that much?"

Bucky closed his eyes and Sam knew that he'd crossed an invisible line._Yeah, the whole HYDRA situation, _Sam scolded himself._That was a dumb thing to say. _When Bucky set his rifle carefully on the ground, Sam thought he was about to get a beat down. But then the black chest armor opened and Bucky shrugged out of it, then lifted the edge of his thin Kevlar-laced undershirt. The right side of his lowermost two ribs was a mess of blood and bone fragments haloed around a blackened and swollen entrance wound. "Mostly through the meat," Bucky commented. "I felt it exit, but the armor didn't let it pass. Hot round stuck to the skin on the back."

"Probably cauterized it there, yeah." Sam fumbled for his kit, having to yank it hard from the misshapen place on his belt. He'd dealt with gunshot wounds in the field before, but never from someone who wasn't screaming and yelling his head off. Or just standing there…quietly looking at it.

The deformed bullet fell to the gravel behind Bucky with a muted "plink."

"Come on," Sam said, casting off his sense of the weirdness of the situation. "Into the shed. I'll take care of that. Got any other bullet holes I should know about?"

"You shouldn't have known about _this_ one." But Bucky retrieved his weapon, pocketed the dropped bullet, and let Sam lead him into the equipment shed without complaint.

Light sifted through a dusty window high in the wall above the door, lighting neatly stacked steel target support rods and a few digging tools. A collapsed folding table leaned against one wall. Sam snatched a plastic tarp from one of the shelves and spread it across the narrow space of uncluttered floor. "Sit down on that."

Bucky moved to the edge of the tarp and faltered. He paled suddenly, and took a slow, controlled breath through his lips.

"Adrenaline wore off, huh?" Sam took the wounded man's elbow and guided him into a sitting position. He helped to peel off the protective undershirt, then took a moment to stare. "You were hit more than once, man."

"I was?"

Sam pointed out two enormous, blackening bruises on Bucky's chest. "Your armor stopped them, though."

A grunt was the reply.

Sam fitted two pieces of a pre-filled injector together, held it up to the light and gave it two brisk taps. "I'm going to give you a shot of morpho." At Bucky's skeptical look, Sam said, "Well, _somebody_ is getting it. Maybe I will, so I don't have to listen to any more of your macho crap today."

Bucky huffed a laugh, then grimaced and held his side. While Bucky was distracted, Sam pressed the sprayject against Bucky's upper arm and thumbed the spring-loaded release. Bucky's expression flared with anger, which faded in seconds as the painkiller spread through his system. "That's good stuff."

"Mm hmm," Sam hummed agreeably as he squeezed a palm-sized bag of gel to mix the components. "They use that for Steve."

"Why are you carrying Steve's painkiller?" Bucky asked with a suspicious scowl.

Sam sighed and tore open the plastic packet. "I can't carry a whole lot of extra supplies, less if I might be hauling someone else around," he said pointedly. "This morpho works on Steve, and you, and me too. I would have to give myself a much lower dose, but there's no reason to carry two kinds." He held up the gel pack. "Now are you going to let me plug that hole, or argue with me about why I have it?"

Bucky looked chastened, and Sam assumed that was as much of an apology as he was going to get. He dabbed a thin layer of gel over the blistered and charred skin on Bucky's back, then squeezed the rest into the wound on the front of his ribs. He packed it in with two fingers, making sure that it covered every exposed bleeding vessel as far as he could reach. The gel would expand further over the next few minutes in response to Bucky's body heat. His patient didn't make a sound, just settled into a routine of controlled breathing. Finally, Sam sat back and wiped his hands. "I'd give you IV fluids if I had any, but that should hold your oil in until we can call for our ride home."

"Already did," Bucky said through gritted teeth. His eyes darted to Sam and then lowered to the tarp. "Thanks."

The curt word of gratitude pleased Sam quite a bit. But he said, "I still hate you."

It hurt too much to laugh, but Bucky flashed a grin.


End file.
